In week 4, we got more in depth about Biomimicry. This subject is interesting to me because it has gotten me to really look at and understand nature rather than just going through the motions when walking outside. One thing we do not realize is that even when we are rushing around trying to get somewhere, if we are outside, we have sometime to look at the world around us and really look at it. As long as we are outside, we can see nature for what it really is and see what we can find in it that can inspire us. I feel like this ties into Janine Benyus’s TED talk when she was talking about how she showed the group of engineers how to really see what we can find and learn from nature and what we can get inspired about to make the world more sustainable. In doing this we can use nature as a model and learn from it rather than take away from it for our own liking. and as for using it as a measure we can take what we learn and put it into every day use and use it for inspiration to completely change the way we do things that normally cause harm to the environment and turn it into something helpful for it. And then we can use nature as a mentor by seeing the feedback we get from it and be able to see the beauty unfold under what nature does to better the environment, that we have tried to do harmfully in the past.

I have used asknature.org in the past to figure out how to create something that can reform it’s shape in certain ways. I found a way that the blow fish could be inspiration to what I was trying to achieve. It still had a little tweaking to be able to be successful but it something I am willing to continue to look into and progress further.

I have been recycling since about middle school. My dad and i would save our soda cans and we would put them in a separate bin that he bought.When it got really full, we would take it to the nearest recycling place to get what we saved weighed and then we would get a certain amount of money, based off of the weight we would bring in, paid back to us for recycling so much. To this day, I look for ways to do the same thing. I do not drink soda anymore but I do drink a lot of water and I will always try to find a way to recycle the plastic water bottles I use. sometimes that is hard when there are no resources around for me to do so but I always look for ways. On campus is easy because of the separate bins and sometimes I will save the bottles until the next time I will be around a recycling bin. I also reuse things like old shirts and jeans to create other things I can use. I use old t shirts for rags and I sometimes I turn old jeans into shorts or even a bag sometimes. I also have learned a way to turn old shirts into a rug and have wanted to try that for a while. I always find ways to reuse and recycle if I can. I also send my old clothes to good will which is a from of reusing.